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Movie review: 'Star Trek Into Darkness' - Movie Reviews- fresnobee.com

Interesting Cumberbatch interview in Wall Street Journal

Benedict Cumberbatch is best known in his native England for playing the title role in the British TV series “Sherlock.” But with four high-profile movies scheduled for release before the end of this year, he’s about to hear his name a lot on these shores, too.

First up is J.J. Abrams’s “Star Trek Into Darkness,” opening Thursday, in which Mr. Cumberbatch plays the villainous John Harrison. (The Internet is bubbling with speculation about the nature of the character and his connection to “Star Trek” history, with press materials referring to him as “the man called John Harrison.”) After that, he’ll play the fire-breathing dragon Smaug in Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” Wikileaks mastermind Julian Assange in Bill Condon’s “The Fifth Estate,” and “Little” Charles Aiken in the film adaptation of Tracy Letts’s “August: Osage County.”

Mr. Cumberbatch, based in North London, is currently filming the third season of “Sherlock.” The Wall Street Journal sat with the 36-year-old actor on his balcony at the Bowery Hotel to talk about “Star Trek Into Darkness.”

To play John Harrison, branded a “terrorist,” did you draw from any real-life figures?

I was very conscious of how justified he felt in his actions, and how any underdog driven to desperate measures can do the most devastatingly inhumane things to bring about some end to what they see as being an inequality.

So there was a sense of empathy for the character?

I think with any characterization there’s a point where you empathize, no matter how much of a deviance his or her actions may be from your understanding of humanity. You have to empathize, and that can go for the people who perform despicable acts. Having said that, when I sit in my own audience now—which is a very weird thing to do for an actor on any given day, especially with a film this big, in an IMAX theater, in New York—I was terrified by what I was doing. I don’t have kids but I’m quite glad at this stage that I don’t have to go, “Just look away, dad’s not like that.”

How did you build this villain, from the stillness in his face and sitting position, to the way he leaps and kicks?

It was very fast, the casting, so I had to go into a really quick exploration of his exterior first. Costume [and] makeup played a huge part in that. J.J. and I tried stuff and I was like, “I don’t want to have long hair,” “I don’t want to have big, flowy jackets.” I want to be quite naked in this. The physicality for me was very much about having incredible, sudden violence. The containment of emotions wasn’t like brute strength, like Bane [in “The Dark Knight Rises”] or kind of a bulldozer, but someone who was like a spearheaded arrow who would just carve his way through people. I wanted there to be a real suddenness to his motions, absolute ruthlessness, and then in repose I wanted it almost to be like sleep mode for that body. The physicality can just lay to rest and become more reptilian and very cold-blooded. I wanted it to be something still enough so that Kirk, everyone in the audience, would lean in and examine him.

You’ve been doing television, stage and films in Europe for about a decade now. Is your first major Hollywood film of a piece with the career you’ve been cultivating?

It’s difficult because nothing’s preordained by plan and you can’t control it. That’s one of those joys and thrills and nerve-racking realities of being an actor. A lot has to do with luck, no matter what your talent or contribution can be. I would say they came to me, which is kind of the way I always wanted to work anything on this scale. Not because I’m dubious about big films in Hollywood as such, but because I’ve enjoyed the sort of privileged, rich mixture that actors in London—who are lucky enough to work in the first place—get between theater, television, radio and film.

(Source: The Wall Street Journal)

Benedict Cumberbatch is glad to not have kids… kind of…

So there was a sense of empathy for the character?

I think with any characterization there’s a point where you empathize, no matter how much of a deviance his or her actions may be from your understanding of humanity. You have to empathize, and that can go for the people who perform despicable acts. Having said that, when I sit in my own audience now—which is a very weird thing to do for an actor on any given day, especially with a film this big, in an IMAX theater, in New York—I was terrified by what I was doing. I don’t have kids but I’m quite glad at this stage that I don’t have to go, “Just look away, dad’s not like that.”

(Source: The Wall Street Journal)

Cumberbatch may be slickly dressed and wouldn’t look out of place on a Myer catwalk but he simmers with a powerful and vicious evil.

He is ambiguous and chilling and plays the role with a cold detachment. It is a powerhouse performance and puts many movie villains to shame.

(Source: frasercoastchronicle.com.au)